Method of making scouring utensils



A. HOMON 1,995,808

: -METHOD OF MAKING SCOURING UTENSILS, Filed Dec'v2, 1952 I N V EN TOR. Alan final ATTORNEYS.

Patented Mar. 26, 1935 UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE Albert Homon,

Chicopee,

Mass., assignor to Springfield Wire & Tinsel 00., West Springfield, Mass., a corporation of Massachusetts Application December 2, 1932, Serial No. 645,360

3 Claims.

This invention relates to an improved method of making a scouring utensil. It has been common practice to bunch metallic strands made of flattened and coiled filaments and use the bunch for a scouring utensil. It is usually made of a' size to fit the users hand. Various improvements have been made in the formation of the bunch. For example, the patent to Mayer No. 1,713,975, and the patent to Bradford No. 1,864,579 show the plan of winding a skein of the strand material and then tying the skein in different ways to get different formations of the utensil.

When the utensil is made in skein formation, the turns of the skein give definite predetermined loops to the strand. While it is usual for such loops to become more or less tangled one with another, they do nevertheless characterize the body formation of the bunch and they can be pulled apart rather easily. This results in an easier separation of one portion of the bunch from the other portions than is desirable. That is to say, the bunched material does not hang together in as uniform a manner as is desirable. If it is stretched in one direction (along the length of the loops), its strands will crowd together. But when stretched in a direction at right angles, the strands will separate. This makes the skein bunch act differently according to the direction of strain. The skein winding does not give as uniform resistance under strain as is desirable in the utensil.

The problem of this invention is to so form the metallic strand or composite strand (of metal and textile filaments) that the resulting utensil will be made up so as to give a more uniform resistance throughout its body portion than prior art untensils of the same general character. What is desired is to have the utensil of substantially equal softness throughout its body portion,'to have it no easier to pull out in one direction than another, but equally easy in all directions, and to have it so that it will return to its general form equally well from Whatever direction it is pulled out in use.-

I solve this problem by winding the strand material under substantially uniform tension (light enough to give rather loose formation), as balls of cord or yarn are formed, except that my ball winding is not such as will give a solid ball in the ultimate product. The direction of winding such a ball formation constantly changes so that the loops of the winding are constantly crossing one another and the whole mass is cross grained, but not woven, to give it self-supporting strength against strain in any direction.

So far as I know, I am the first to form a cleaning utensil by this kind of ball winding. I am aware that cleaning strands have been worked into a tangled mass of general ball form, much as a bunch of snow is packed into ball form. But a loose, tangled mass of metallic cleaning strands has not been formed as a ball wound mass to give the body of the cleaning utensil a uniform crossgrained character to hang together, as in my specific forms.

To illustrate my invention in its preferred form reference is had to the accompanying drawing, in which-- Fig. 1 is a diagrammatic plan view indicating the core and a preferred method of ball winding, showing the beginning courses of the cleaning material strand to be wound;

Fig. 2 is a side view indicating an arbor support for a winding core disk and in dash line the outline of the body of material that may be ball wound on the core;

Fig. 3 is a view of a portion of the scouring material in coiled metallic filament form, usually fiat, which is the kind of strand that is wound to make the utensil. The scale is enlarged;

Fig. 4 is a view like Fig. 3 but of two coils of strand material with their coils interlocked as a variation of the kind of strand that may be wound to make the utensil; and

Fig. 5 is a view of the kind of ball-like utensil such as may be made up to embody my inven-' tion.

I prefer to use a curled wire filament a of fiattened cross-section such as shown in Fig. 3. This kind of wire is commonly curled by drawing it over a straight edge under tension and releasing the tension. The metal then has an inherent tendency to coiled spring form. The drawing of it is conventional and on an enlarged scale. With this curled wire as the winding material, I may use for purposes of simple illustration (in a hand method a core disk b which may be of cardboard in circular disk-form with an arbor c for support) the following procedure: I wind coiled wire a as illustrated in Fig. 1 over and under disk b. The starting courses of the winding are shown in Fig. 1. Each course is along a diameter of the disk D, the arbor 0 being of relatively negligible size. Course 1 on top proceeds in the direction of the arrows, turns into course 2 under the disk, 3 on top, and then courses 4, 5, 6, 7, etc. As usual in ball winding, the courses each make an angle with the previous and succeeding courses so as to spread over the disk and cover it. The action is carried on along the lines indicated until thedesired weight of material is built up to the desired size on disk D. One form is shown by the door knob shape indicated by the outline of Fig. 2. Of course the winding can be kept up if a larger ball is desired or one more nearly round in contour than that shown in Fig. 2-for example, such as shown in Fig. 5. The idea is to wind a shape'convenient for the hand utensil purpose. shaped.

When the winding is finished to a form as illustrated in Figs. 2 or 5, the arbor c is drawn out, the cardboard core may be collapsed, the body material stretched apart, and the core removed either as a whole or in torn parts. What is left is the utensil embodying the characteristics of my invention.

In winding the utensil from a springy, coiled strand a, it is desirable to use a suflicient winding tension to give the adjacent portions of the strands a distinct tendency to tangle and interlock coils. This interlocking happens best when the mass of the utensil is put under tension when winding and springs together when the winding tension is released upon collapsing the core. To further this action I may use a composite strand as illustrated in Fig. 4, made up of two oppositely coiled strands a and or arranged along the same axis, or I may use two coils turned in the same direction. The latter may be made by drawing two filaments instead of one under tension over the straight edge in a coiling machine (such as shown in the W'olle Patent No. 1,689,993, C-ctober 23, 1928) and carrying them side by side or one over the other through the same steps as the single filament of Fig. 3.

I do not desire to limit myself to the particular kind or elastically arranged filamentary material of coiled form such as I have shown. It is the kind preferred at present, but I am disclosing my invention for use with any of the many known specific forms of scouring metallic strands whether with or without a core and whether the core is a coiled metal filament to give elasticity to the strand or is straight and served with a coiled filament or whether both core and covering or core carried strand thereon are coiled. One important point is that the scouring strand be of suificient springy material to give the desired action in the utensil formed as I have described.

The winding may be done on known ball winding machines instead of by hand as I have indicated.

A characteristic of the utensil such as shown in Fig. 5 is that there are no hard spots in it; that is, no substantially concentrated material to make appreciable lumps. It is soft and springy throughout and when pulled apart, as it needs to be to fluff it up for use and to rinse it like a sponge, the resistance is practically the same in all directions of pull. The precise, orderly ball wind of the strand is originally making the utensil is lost in a tangled mass when the core is removed and the winding tension is released by It may be round or knob-.

acaeoe the collapse of the material. But due to the ball wind the strand turns have been crossed and recrossed with one another, so as to interlock in a fundamentally cross-grained structure which will retain its fundamental form, even under very hard usage. That is to say, the direction of the loops or turns of the winding are not even generally uniform or in the same direction as in skein winding, but are changed so much as in ball winding that the article has more the characteristics of woven or knitted utensils than of a wound structure in the sense that the parts hang together better.

Having described my invention, what I claim 1. The method of making a metallic scouring utensil with a metallic filament with closely spaced helical coils to make a highly elastic strand of many scouring edges, winding such strand under sufiicient tension to separate the coils about a flat building core by constantly changing the angular direction of successive diametrical turns with respect to each other until a ball-like body is built up with the turns crossed and recrossed throughout the mass as in ball winding, and then removing the building core and permitting the winding tension to be thus relaxed so as to render the utensil in loose formation with substantially uniform resistance to stretch in ever direction.

x The method of making a metallic scouring utensil with a metallic filament with closely spaced helical coils to make highly elastic strand material of many scouring edges, winding such strand material under suflicient tension to separate the coils, about a substantially flat building core by constantly changing the angular direction of successive diametrical winding turns with respect to each other until a ball-like body is built up with such turns crossed and recrossed throughout the mass as in ball winding. and then removing the building core and permitting the winding tension to be thus relaxed so as to render the utensil in loose formation with substantially uniform resistance to stretch in every direction.

3. The method of making an all-metal scouring utensil with a metallic filament with closely spaced helical coils to make a highly elastic body material of coiled strands of many scouring edges, winding such body material under tension to slightly separate the coils and build up the utensil in tensioned ball-wound form with winding turns made about a common center and crossed and recrossed throughout the mass, and then, when suflicient material is thus wound to make the mass of desired size, simultaneously releasing said winding tension throughout the mass so as to render the utensil in loose formation of highly elastic form and with uniform resistance to stretch in every direction due to the crossed winding turns and interlocked helical coils in adjacent strands.

ALBERT HOMON. 

